The father of one of the journalists killed in Virginia is vowing to 'take on' the NRA

CNN
The father of one of two journalists fatally shot in Virginia this week is calling for stricter gun laws.

After his daughter Alison Parker, 24, was shot by a former coworker Wednesday morning, Andy Parker appeared multiple times on CNN calling for gun control, saying he was going to "take on" the National Rifle Association to get gun-control legislation passed.

"Look," Parker said Thursday, "I'm for the Second Amendment, but there has to be a way to force politicians that are cowards and in the pockets of the NRA to come to grips and make sense — have sensible laws so that crazy people can't get guns. It can't be that hard.

"I can hear it now. They're going to say, 'Oh, gee, well, if they were carrying, this never would have happened.'"

"I've got news for you," he continued. "If Alison or Adam had been caring an AK-47 strapped around their waist, it wouldn't have made any difference. They couldn't have seen this thing coming. So I don't want to hear that argument from the NRA, and you know that's going to happen. And I'm going to take it on."

Parker told CNN's Ashleigh Banfield in an interview Thursday afternoon that he spoke with Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia (D) about a renewed push for gun-control measures, such as universal background checks.

"We need politicians like [McAuliffe] who will stand up to the gun lobby, and stand up for reasonable gun control," Parker said. "And if I have to make it political, so be it. I'm going to let it rip."

A woman speaks with a journalist as she is overcome with emotion near a memorial outside the offices for WDBJ7 in Roanoke, Virginia, August 26, 2015.
Reuters/Chris Keane

Parker's immediate call for action shows the shift that has taken place in the gun-control debate over the past several years.

Gun-rights advocates have long accused gun-control advocates of capitalizing on shootings to score political points. But increasingly, shooting victims' families and pro-gun-control politicians have wasted little time between shootings to call for stricter gun laws.

Last year, the father of a student killed at a shooting at the University of California at Santa Barbara railed against pro-gun politicians in a CNN interview that quickly went viral.

On Wednesday, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton took a minute after a speech in Iowa to address the shooting.

"We have got to do something about gun violence in America," Clinton said. "And I will take it on."

"There's so much evidence that if guns were not so readily available, if there were universal background checks ... that maybe we could prevent this kind of carnage," she added.